The GORUCK Challenge and Security
Mar 2026
It has been fifteen years since I showed up to take the GORUCK Challenge.
Back then it was still raw. Early days. 2011 era. There was no polished event machine, no clear expectations, no training plans floating around online. When people asked what it was, the answer from Jason McCarthy was simple enough: bring a rucksack with bricks in it and a Green Beret will lead the class from start to finish. Details not forthcoming.
That was about the extent of the briefing. Awesome!
No set distance. No set time. No published route. No finish line waiting somewhere on a map. Just a rough idea that it would take 10 to 12 hours, cover something like 15 to 20 miles, and that you would carry lots of pounds of bricks the entire time. And a Green Beret would be in charge.
Jason was the Cadre that night.
At the time I took it, I was dealing with injuries that had been lingering for years. The kind that make you constantly second guess what your body can actually handle. I remember thinking I would try it, see how far I got, and if things went sideways then so be it.
Instead it pushed me well past what I thought my limits were.
There is something interesting about having a Green Beret calmly telling you to keep moving when every part of your body wants to stop. It is awesome in a semi masochistic way. The suffering is shared. The expectations are simple. Move. Carry the weight. Help the team. Do not quit.
The physical side is obvious. The ruck, the miles, the exercises, and the constant grind. But the real lesson was never the miles.
It was the mindset.
The Challenge stripped things down to fundamentals. You had a mission, you had a team, you had weight on your back, and problems in front of you. Complaining did nothing. Overthinking did nothing. You solved the problem in front of you and kept moving.
I learned those lessons earlier in the military, but like many things in life, lessons fade if they are not exercised. The Challenge brought them back to the surface. It forced me to confront some personal demons and reminded me how much mental noise we tend to accumulate over time.
When everything is reduced to movement, effort, and teamwork, clarity returns.
That experience followed me into my work in security.
Security programs, like people, tend to accumulate unnecessary weight. Layers of tools, of process, and of fear driven decisions. Eventually the program becomes heavy in all the wrong ways.
That GORUCK Challenge mindset we all absorbed that night was the exact opposite. Focus on the objective, carry the weight that matters, and help the team move forward.
Keep going even when things get uncomfortable.
Years later, when I started sending members of my own teams to take the Challenge, I was not doing it for fitness. That part was just a side effect. I wanted them to experience the same shift in perspective.
During the Challenge you learn quickly that individual performance matters far less than collective progress. Someone is always stronger at one moment and weaker at another. The team adjusts. The weight gets redistributed. The objective remains the same.
That mentality translates directly into security work. Incidents do not care about job titles. Attackers do not care about organizational charts. When something breaks, the team either moves together or it fails together.
People who went through the Challenge came back different. Harder in some ways, calmer in others. Less likely to panic when something looked messy. More willing to carry extra load when someone else was struggling.
And maybe most importantly, they learned that forward progress matters more than perfect conditions.
That mentality became part of how I approached leadership in security: set clear objectives, reduce noise, keep the team moving, and solve the problem in front of you.
Over time this thinking naturally aligned with what I now call Security Brutalism.
Security Brutalism is a return to the structural integrity of security programs. It strips away decorative complexity and theater, and focuses on the load bearing elements that actually matter. Fundamentals like identity control, data protection, attack surface discipline, and real monitoring and response.
In many ways, Security Brutalism mirrors the lessons of that long night with a ruck full of bricks. You do not carry unnecessary weight. You do not rely on illusions of progress. You focus on the fundamentals that allow the system to endure stress.
The modern security industry often rewards noise, dashboards, more tools, more noise. The appearance of control. But when things actually break, when attackers push hard against the system, most of that noise disappears quickly, and controls fail.
What remains are the fundamentals done right. The team that trained and prepared. The discipline to continue and the willingness to keep moving when the situation gets uncomfortable.
Fifteen years later, I still think about that Challenge. Not because of the miles or the bricks, but because of the clarity it forced.
Jason leading a group of exhausted people through a city at night with almost no instructions may seem like a strange training exercise, but the lesson was simple and durable: carry the weight that matters, help the team, and keep moving forward.